Pages

Thursday, April 30, 2009

the job that eats up the best part of your waking hours, turns you into a paranoid ball of nerves when you discover a file-sharing tool in your computer and made you gain ten kilos in less than a year.

blame it on the job. blame it on the fact that you're tired. blame it on me.

when you work i/we take a backseat. the sun is shining and spring is beckoning but you have to sleep so i while away the afternoon tip-toeing around the house because i dont want to wake you.

when you work it's like romance never existed. a woman is for cleaning the house, ferrying you around and fixing you dinner.

i am giving you a hard time. i am pushing you into a corner. i am asking for too much.

what are you giving me then? a car to always feel sorry for, a house too big and too old to clean by myself, or lonely dinners i have with the TV?

the tub of a man needs to seriously reconsider his rapidly decreasing number of options.

Friday, April 17, 2009

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. The building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world. “- V for Vendetta

I don’t know if this movie generated enough fanfare back home, but it earns a place in my personal top ten. Natalie Portman’s British accent is weak and inconsistent at best, but V’s eloquence is probably the biggest reason why Portman’s character fell in love with the mask of Guy Fawkes. Any more information and I’d be spoiling it for you.

If every day of the world’s life had a name, the one for today would be “feisty”.

I took the green mobile out on a ride up north to meet two very spirited old ladies in what was my first official field research outing. It was also my virgin ride alone on the toll expressway, and I was given very specific instructions by the man to “go at 60, keep left and watch the road”.

Words by a wise man with a gold driver’s licence (they give it out to people with a 5-year accident-free record).

(Wait. Doesn’t scratching the entire left side of the car against a wall count as an accident?)

I ended up staring at the back end of a delivery truck as I trundled along the highway, watching the other cars happily whizzing past me in the rain. My over-zealous plan to arrive on time worked too perfectly; I was an hour and a half too early, but that did nothing to dampen my triumphant mood at completing my first-ever long-distance drive.

In the end, the interview lasted for five hours. For most of it, I felt as if I had spent an afternoon in the home of two chatty grand-aunties that I’ve always had a soft spot for. They told me of how their parents had taken their entire fortunes and crossed the ocean to the Philippines, livestock in tow, in the search of a better life. They recounted how as children they picked coconuts and fruit in Mindanao, and how they scrambled for rations given out by the GIs in wartime Okinawa after the escalating Pacific War forced their families to flee the Philippines and return home.

These two women come from Kin, a sleepy town 25 kilometers north of Naha, where 60% of the town’s total land area is occupied by a massive US military facility. This town was also the place where the kidnapping and brutal rape of a local 12-year-old girl by three US military servicemen took place in 1995. Just last month, a stray bullet from an army live firing exercise ricocheted off the license plate of a car parked at a residential apartment just meters from the military base.

The Americans obviously knew how they could make the locals tolerate them being too close for comfort right in the middle of the town’s most arable and fertile land. Money never fails to quell displeasure, and every year hundreds of millions of yen flow from the hands of Japanese taxpayers to the US army and into the palms of waiting Kin folk.

The women of Kin soon found themselves deprived of the military payments when the male representatives of the local residents’ community altered the rules to fatten their own pockets and prevent females from getting their share of the money. Rattled, the women banded together and took their male counterparts to court. They won the first lawsuit, lost the second and earned what they were hoping for in the final appeal to the Supreme Court.

As I listened to their stories I suddenly realized that these two women who were the same age as my own grandmother were talking passionately about human rights and gender equality. And I thought women of my age knew better.

In a time when the young women of the world are busy equating material affluence and economic independence with emancipation and empowerment, I found myself speaking to two living examples of what feminism should really be representing – relentless challenge of the status quo and the desire for justice and the things that should truly be.

They expressed their surprise at how a foreigner like me could be interested in the affairs of a small town so far removed from the eyes of the world. I balked at the awe they bestowed, humbled by the richness of their life experiences and the strength of their spirits.